


Things Left Unsaid Between Us

by eliask



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awkwardness, Character Study, Family, Father-daughter Relationship?, Fluff, Gen, Injury, Tea, Teacher-Student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliask/pseuds/eliask
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of tea, burns, and a budding, somewhat awkward relationship between two people who find that they are perhaps more alike than they themselves would prefer. Rey accidentally hurts herself, and Luke tries to blame himself. Rey & Luke bonding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Left Unsaid Between Us

"Here, tell me when to stop."

Rey regards her own cup, filled with the tea leaves that Luke has found and prepared. The leaves are dark and dried and curled. Luke is pouring her hot water. The tea leaves expand and start to float to the top.

"That's enough," she says. He stops pouring and moves to fill his own cup.

They sit across each other at the fire pit, the fire smoldering, the flames licking and hissing, hot on Rey's face. She blinks the smoke from her eyes.

It is afternoon on Ach-to. The sky is grey and cloudy like an oyster shell. It is chilly, almost unpleasantly so. Rey is worn out from training, and Luke had called for a breaking, suggesting something hot to drink.

Steam is rising from their cups. It's still too hot to drink. Rey frowns at her tea. Rey has little experience with tea. Tea is leisure. It takes time and money to procure and prepare, and to drink. It can use up a lot of water that would better be used for drinking straight or washing. Rey the scavenger had no time or use for luxuries like that.

But here, there is no shortage of water, and at least Luke seems to think that there is always more time. And how can currency exist, conceptually, on a planet with a population of one? (Well, now it’s up to four: Luke, Chewy, Artoo, and Rey. Still, no one seems interested in jump-starting an economy.)

So Luke made tea.

Rey watches Luke with his own cup, then imitates him. She brings the cup to her lips and sips. She scowls. It's too hot. She starts to puts the cup down, and some of the hot tea splashes down onto her leg. She curses in Teedo. Her leg is burning underneath her clothes.

Luke's blue eyes are wide and grim. "I'm so sorry, I can get-"

She shakes her head. She's already pushed her pant leg up. Her leg above her knee is already red, but it's not so bad, she thinks. She's scalded herself before, cooking accidents when she was a child and didn't know how to keep herself safe. A few times, she's burned herself on the hot sand, and a few times in flame. A little hot water is nothing she hasn't experienced before.

She curses again and means to smile bracingly back at Luke, but then she leans backwards: he's standing right over her. She hadn't even noticed him move.

"Here," he says. His voice is not very deep, not as high as hers but higher than she expected, she thinks. Before she can register what's going on, he's pouring cold water onto her burn. She cringes initially, but then she sighs into the feeling. Her leg does feel better.

"I'm sorry," he says again. He's still pouring the cold water from his own carafe.

"Not your fault," Rey tries to smile back.

Luke's lips are still bloodless. "I can try to heal you faster, with the Force-"

"Luke," she says, more firmly this time. "I'm fine. I've had worse."

It's true. No matter her other burns. She's fallen off speeders, her gear has failed her while rappelling off old ships, she's gotten into fights that left her bloody, and, a few times, she's gotten so sick she couldn't even crawl over to Unkar Plutt's to beg for food.

There are those on Jakku who call her a miracle (this is when they aren't cursing her existence for scavenging wares before they can get to them), but Rey knows how she survived so long on her own. It’s because she had something to live for.

Luke cringes at her words, but he seems to acknowledge the truth of them. He hesitates, and then heads back to his side of the fire.

"Thank you," she says, genuinely. "For the cold water." She doesn't say, And for caring.

Sometimes, Rey really misses Han. She hadn't known him for long but he had known when not to be serious. It had been so natural speaking with him, joking with him. Not like it is with Luke. Everything turns so awkward and stilted between them. She wonders if it will always be like that.

Luke smiles blandly. It does not reach his eyes. "I'm sorry about the tea."

Rey says again, "It's not your fault." She wishes they could change the subject.

Luke hesitates, then says, "I'm still sorry. And for other things."

Rey doesn't have to ask what he means by other things. Her heart sinks and she feels more buoyant, all at once. Her stomach is both tingly and leaden. She feels stretched somehow, and tired, and old.

"I know," she says. She offers him a smile. 

He looks at her like he's really looking at her, not like he did that first awful day, but almost as though he is seeing through her. His expression is many things, but peaceful - that of which he claims to be in pursuit - is not one of them.

She wants to say it. She's ready. But for some reason, she can't say it out loud. 

I love you, she wants to say.

But he's Force sensitive, and they have developed a bond, and of course he smiles at her then, and his eyes crinkle and she can see his teeth. And for a moment, she sees a glimmer of a young man she never met, who blew up a death star, and saved the galaxy.

She's not quite sure if she'll ever reconcile the mythical man she heard rumors of rumors about with the quiet, thoughtful man in front of her who lives self-sufficiently in self-imposed isolation millions of lightyears away from any inhabitable planet. The man who can rant on and on about organic dish soap. The man who chooses to meditate by himself on a cliff, or hole himself up in the Falcon with no one but Artoo, who she has to beg to train her to use a lightsaber. The man who prefers to make Tatooine food on a deserted island planet over seeing his own sister, and face the problems he helped create. A lot of what he does she finds problematic, and sometimes even, she thinks, morally wrong. And yet-

“It's true,” she says aloud - and her voice is affectionately mischievous.

Luke truly smiles.


End file.
